To get customers can be challenging for many businesses. Therefore, once you do get them, it’s important to know how to manage them and keep them happy. This is where a CRM system comes handy. Having a CRM helps you to maintain and improve your relationship with customers. This article will give you an idea of what a CRM is all about and what its benefits are.

What Is A CRM?

CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship Management’ which essentially means exactly what it says on the tin. The CRM system is designed to provide the appropriate tools to help you manage your customers, in order to have a good relationship with them. As mentioned before, gaining customers can be quite hard, however retaining them could be even harder. Therefore, ensuring that your customers are retained is perhaps one of the most important things you can do as a business.

5 CRM software you could use for your business.

You may have heard of these systems before or perhaps not, however here are 5 top CRM systems you could use in your business:

·        Salesforce

·        NetSuite

·        SugarCRM          

·        Sage Intacct

·        Zoho CRM

What Are The Benefits Of Having A CRM:

Customer retention

One of the biggest and obvious benefits of having a CRM is having the potential of keeping your customers happy (Better customer retention). With the ability of having the information of your customers stored in one system, you know when some of their personal information. Through your CRM system, you can set a reminder to send them an email when it’s their birthday or use it for professional matters such as setting up meeting reminders. Whichever you decide to use it for, the point is that CRMs help you to maintain a personal and professional relationship with your customers as they feel appreciated and considered when contacted at the right time and for the right reasons. This way you’re more likely to keep them and build a personal relationship.

Gives you a better understanding of your customer

Having your customer’s information such as where they live, their age and history of communication, allows you to know them more and how to meet their needs. For example, when sending out a particular message, you would know which audience the message would suit the most or perhaps how you can approach a particular audience based on the information you have of them.

Segmentation

Following up from the point above, CRM allows you to segment your customers well. You can target people better and aim potential clients based on a particular group of people you have segmented. CRM systems gives you a vast amount of data including the sales history, the emails customers have sent, (Or live chat history) as well as the marketing communication they may have responded to. As a Digital Marketer, how they responded to your communication, should give you an indication of who they are and how you can group them to get a better response when you get in touch with them in future.

Improved communication

A CRM system allows you to have different communication system such as emails, live chat and calls all in one system. With it being in one system, you and your business have a better chance to get back to your customers a lot quicker. You’re also provided with the option of having pre-set email (and/or live chat) templates to respond in a speedy manner. Also, with previous communication stored, including the amount of times they’ve contacted you, different team members (perhaps from the customer service team) are able to pick up each other’s enquiries and deal with it efficiently.

Conclusion

To conclude, it’s fair to stress that using CRM works in your advantage in many ways. There’s nothing more satisfying than a customer knowing that they are understood and provided with what they need. This would let your customer know that you’re serious about keeping them which would allow them to remain loyal to your business and encourage them to recommend other people to you.